by Alex Meneses Miyashita
Nancy Pelosi
Hispanic business leaders announced an alliance May 7 to press Congress to pass the U.S. free tradeviolentagreement with Colombia.
They urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to bring the agreement to the floor for a vote as soon as possible and promised to continue pushing Congress until it is approved.
Nearly 100 organizations, among them the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, have joined the coalition, named the Hispanic Trade and Business Alliance, in an effort to keep the trade deal alive after the Democratic majority in Congress put an indefinite hold on it last month.
The alliance effort was announced following a meeting of members of organizations in support of the FTA with a half dozen Republican senators and Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez.
Leading the initiative to coalesce these groups is an organization called the Hispanic Alliance for Prosperity Institute.
The agreement, which was signed in November 2006 by the United States and Colombia, was sent to Congress by President Bush last April, giving lawmakers 90 days to vote on it through the fast-track rule. But the House of Representatives passed a resolution that waived the fast-track requirement.
Alliance members plan to launch grassroots efforts nationwide to promote the trade agreement and urge constituents to pressure their members in Congress to act on it.
Supporters of the agreement are calling on Democrats to stop using the trade agreement as a “bargaining chip” for political benefit.
“It is very important that we approach this not as a partisan issue,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.).
Pelosi declared through an e-mail from her office that given the state of the economy, “now is not the time to be discussing free trade agreements with other countries.”
She added, “Democrats in Congress are focused on providing much-needed relief to hard-working Hispanic families here at home.”
Secretary Gutiérrez said that from a commercial, geopolitical and national security point of view, the decision to delay a vote on the agreement was an error.
If the FTA is not passed, he added, U.S. exporters going into Colombia will continue paying tariffs while Colombian exporters coming to the United States won’t because of a deal agreed to by Congress.
“We need to level the playing field,- he said.
The FTA with Colombia is a “Hispanic American issue,” he declared.
“It is a Latin American country. We want these countries to be prosperous. We resent the idea that we’re going to use a Latin American ally as some kind of bargaining chip to get a better deal on something else.”
Nonetheless, Democrats and several Latino leaders and labor unions have expressed concern that the agreement will cost U.S. workers.
“The only impact that free trade agreements have had is more and more job losses,” said Gabriela Lemus, executive director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.
She added that over the past ten years, ‘we have seen 40,000 small and mid-size manufacturing businesses shut down in the United States, and that has a lot to do with globalization.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) maintained that the approval of the trade agreement would be beneficial to the country’s economy and create markets for U.S. exporters, manufacturers and farmers.
Cornyn said that Colombia President Álvaro Uribe “has been one of our best friends. He has joined us in the fight against narco-traffickers,” adding it is important “that we have friendly, democratic governments in Latin America.”
Lemus said Colombia still faces a serious human rights crisis.
“It is not that Uribe has not done anything, but the problem is still grave, and to prize them with a free trade agreement seems to me nefarious,” she said. Hispanic Link.
